“Perhaps one of the strangest sensations I’ve encountered, poised on the brink of motherhood, is the fact that even though I am reading copiously about babies and parenthood, I don’t know anything more than I did before.”

Jenn Berney on raising boys in a hard-to-navigate world: “I want them to understand their luck, to care about the world and the many many ways it’s broken, but when I try to explain its brokenness, they can barely comprehend.”

“So you keep a secret drawer with a few items of her favorite clothes. And you retreat to press your face into them, searching for the familiar scent of her that has long since faded.” — Suzanne Leitz on the marks left by loss.

“The poor kid can’t figure out why he is unable to waltz beneath the dinner table. He can see his hands, his feet, his belly, even his junior if he sucks in, but what he can’t see is that ever-so-stealthy forehead that perches on top like a frightened cat.”

But, you see I am a mother who has to live with grieving a child gone, while loving the child I have, and they’re both the same. I love them both, I just miss one.

“I should be able to ride one horse at a time, because I only have one ass. I fully realize that I can’t ride two horses at once, but just like my little boy, I want to.”

“But after the birth of our daughter . . . struggling for balance in our careers and adult lives and family responsibilities, I have come to understand both intimacy and marriage in new ways. Sometimes, intimacy isn’t closeness but distance.”

Remind yourself that a five year old is sixty months on this planet. Less than 2,000 days old. They’re still brand new people! No one has the right to whisper anything about college or careers to a child determined to conquer the monkey bars.

When little Tommy has the ability to pop in contact lenses to play in a virtual world and doesn’t come out of his room for a month, that generation of parents will express the same type of concern their parents did about spending time on Snapchat.

“Some days we will be tempted to tell the world about our mothering, and others will leave us wanting to hide behind an obnoxiously large diaper bag. I would argue that the sweet spot of vulnerability is somewhere in between.”

“There’s a me who lives inside, one without papery skin beneath her eyes. She feels like the same girl who stood on her porch the night before her sixth birthday. She feels like she did at 17 in love for the first time.”

“Women are not diminished by motherhood. Women are not diminished by forgoing motherhood. Women ARE diminished by inequality and misogyny, and by living in a world that is primarily tailored to the needs of men.”

“If the rest of the world could be more empathetic, accepting, welcoming and kind, my son could be this happy and comfortable all of the time — because then my son could be a boy who dresses like a girl and not have to think twice about it.” 

The maternal body is capable of incredible metamorphosis, wondrous creation. Give me a little genetic material and, in under a year, I will grow you a human being, and my body will split itself open to bring that being into the world and then make milk for it, ex nihilo.

Some autistics can ‘pass for normal.’ I can. It’s exhausting, and by the end of a day of still hands and social conversations and watching people’s mouths in an attempt to demonstrate my interest in their words, I am physically sick and sometimes totally incapable of speaking a word.